Having been appointed to be the first editor-in-chief of this new general review of tactics, I can already appreciate the importance of what is at stake and the high standards of quality that are required of us. General CEMAT and the Director of the CDEC wish to revitalize tactical thinking, to reinvest the field of military thought that we have for too long abandoned to civilian experts and enthusiasts to focus on issues more immediately vital to the future of our armies and their future capabilities: issues of organisation, budget, human resources, "mock-ups", "operational contracts", etc.

This is not to call into question the quality of what many civilian comrades (a significant proportion of whom are reservists, by the way) are writing. Their work as historians, researchers, archivists and popularizers is often of very high quality and extremely useful to us. It is even less a question of doing with less means what they themselves do very well. It is a matter of recognizing that a military member claiming to exercise command in operations or to participate in the choice of equipment and the development of combat doctrines for theIt is about recognising that a soldier who claims to be exercising command in operations or to participate in equipment choices and the development of combat doctrines for the future, should devote a much greater proportion of his or her time and energy to learning and thinking about the substance of what is nevertheless the core of our profession. It is a matter of participating in the rebirth of autonomous army thinking, enabling it to make a more decisive contribution to the operations that lie ahead.

The Chair of Tactics whose creation has just been decided upon has the mission of animating this resurgence. It will not create it. It is a matter of each officer, considering that he is "always on duty", convincing himself of the imperative duty to deepen his knowledge and his historical, geographical and professional reflections. It is also a question of each one becoming aware of the need to share his own reflections and to confront them with those of others.

The Editor-in-Chief therefore warmly invites all those who come to read these pages to send him their thoughts, questions, remarks and proposals, whether they take the form of completed contributions or questions calling for guidance. The only requirement is to speak here of tactics, that is to say the use of weapons in battle and combat.